The X-Files: I Want to Believe
"Believe Again" "To Find The Truth, You Must Believe." Mulder and Scully have been out of the FBI for several years - with Mulder living in isolation as a fugitive from the organization and Scully having become a doctor at a Catholic-run hospital, where she has formed a friendly relationship with a seriously ill boy patient - but, when an FBI agent is mysteriously kidnapped and a former priest who has been convicted of being a pedophile claims to be experiencing psychic visions of the endangered agent, Mulder and Scully reluctantly accept the FBI's request for their particular paranormal expertise on the case. Summary Part One SOMERSET, WEST VIRGINIA 10:23 P.M. At night, FBI Agent Monica Bannan drives to her home in snowy Somerset, West Virginia only to be confronted by two men - one of whom she attacks with a spiked garden hoe before the other man captures her after a brief chase. Joseph Crissman assists an FBI task force in their hunt for Monica Bannan, a missing FBI agent.]] Several hours later, Joseph Crissman leads an FBI task force, searching for the missing agent while supervised by ASAC Dakota Whitney and Special Agent Drummy, to a severed man's arm, buried in the snow, that bears wound marks matching injuries Agent Bannan inflicted on the kidnapper she attacked. OUR LADY OF SORROWS HOSPITAL 8:25 A.M. Dana Scully has a televised conference with an On Screen Doctor.]] In a conference room at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Doctor Dana Scully, surrounded and watched by other members of the Catholic hospital's staff, discusses Christian Fearon, a boy patient at the hospital, during a televised conference with an On Screen Doctor. After Dr. Scully mentions her fear that the extremely ill Christian has Sandhoff disease, her medical consultant reminds her that there is no treatment for that condition and she sadly looks to Father Ybarra, a priest at the hospital who has entered during the conference. Scully later notices Christian being wheeled out of his ward in a wheelchair by his mother and father, and approaches them, making friendly smalltalk with the boy and notifying his parents that the medical staff intend to do some more tests on him. Special Agent Drummy arrives and tells Scully that he, on behalf of the FBI, is urgently looking for Fox Mulder, Scully's former FBI partner. Even though she claims that she no longer works with Mulder, Agent Drummy requests that she contact him, as her doing so might help save the life of another agent, indirectly referring to Agent Bannan. A short time later, Scully drives home to a small, secluded house where she and Mulder live. She enters an office decorated with many newspaper clippings related to the paranormal, where Mulder spends much of his time in isolation and is alone here now, busy cutting another article out of a newspaper. As he does not turn to face her when she enters, Scully opines that he has become incredibly trusting, for a man wanted by the FBI, but Mulder jokingly claims he literally has eyes on the back of his head, and recites science pertaining to such a phenomenon. When Scully tells him that the FBI are requesting his assistance, Mulder is initially very reluctant to help the organization, recalling that they put him on trial for bogus charges and attempted to discredit a decade of his work, but - after Scully exits the room, leaving him to ruminate on a photograph of his sister - he agrees to accept their request, on one condition. Shortly thereafter, he and Scully leave their residence via a black helicopter. WASHINGTON, D.C. 9:24 P.M. Drummy leads Dana Scully and Fox Mulder off a helipad atop the FBI's Headquarters in Washington, D.C..]] At night, the helicopter comes to land on the roof of the FBI's Headquarters in Washington, D.C., where former agents Mulder and Scully meet with Agent Drummy. Mulder thanks him for sending the helicopter but Drummy admits that the credit for doing so is not his to take and, shortly thereafter, leads Mulder and Scully through a corridor in the FBI building, where agents stare at the duo as they pass. After Drummy leaves the pair waiting outside a conference room, they glance at a framed photograph of George W. Bush and another of J. Edgar Hoover. Drummy soon returns, however, and leads the former agents into the bustling conference room, where ASAC Whitney greets them, mentioning that she is aware of Mulder's previous work on the X-files, and briefs them on the case. They learn that Joseph Crissman is a former priest who contacted the FBI with a claim that he was experiencing a psychic vision of Agent Bannan before he led the search to the severed limb and, after Mulder makes a use of language that he innocently intends to be humorous but becomes embarrassingly discomforting, he and Scully discover that Father Joe is a convicted pedophile. RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 1:01 A.M. Whitney prepare to visit Father Joe.]] Two FBI cars enter and park in a snowy area of Richmond, Virginia where Mulder, Scully, Whitney and Drummy exit one of the vehicles and prepare to enter a series of tall buildings nearby, while FBI agents from the other car remain outside the automobiles. While Agent Drummy leads the way, ASAC Whitney describes the buildings to Mulder and Scully as dorms for habitual sex offenders who police themselves, including Father Joe, who lives here voluntarily with a roommate. Mulder makes another joke, as they near the dorms, and Father Joe's roommate permits them access. Once they enter, Scully and her companions see that Father Joe is finishing his prayers in an adjacent room. As Mulder questions him about his visions, Scully makes it clear that she detests Father Joe, doubting both the validity of his prayers and his claims of paranormal ability, before rushing outside in frustration. Mulder approaches her outside, startling her, and they discuss Father Joe, with Scully apologizing for her conduct - even though Mulder praises her actions - and further explaining her doubts. Mulder reveals that he is about to accompany Whitney, Drummy and Father Joe on a journey to determine the former priest's psychic capabilities, but - rather than join them, as Mulder suggests - Scully instead leaves. SOMERSET, WEST VIRGINIA 5:02 A.M. As the four participators of the investigation travel in their FBI car, Mulder further reveals his identity to Father Joe, who learns of his previous assignment on the X-files as well as the abduction of his sister by aliens, a long time ago, and realizes that she is now dead. The team visit a house similar to Agent Bannan's but, even though he claims that the missing agent was taken and attacked there, he later apparently senses it is not the same building involved in the crime and crosses the short distance to the actual building. As Agent Drummy follows Father Joe away to inspect the surrounding area, ASAC Whitney explains to Mulder her skepticism regarding the supposed psychic and tells him that her decision to include him in their investigation was unpopular at the FBI, but Whitney also implies that she decided to involve Mulder because his previous investigations of other psychics impressed her. .]] Moments later, Father Joe falls to his knees in the snow and apparently has another psychic vision of Agent Bannan's abduction, but the demonstration is met with skepticism from Agent Drummy and culminates in the former priest crying tears of blood. Meanwhile, in Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Scully speaks with Christian in his ward but his eagerness to leave causes her to realize he has been scared by the sight of Father Ybarra, who stands in a corridor outside. Advising the boy not to be afraid, Scully leaves to meet with Father Ybarra and passionately discusses Christian with him, arguing that the results of the new tests she ordered is not in his purview. He refutes this, however, and states that there are better facilities available for Christian, as the hospital will not be able to heal him. When a nearby accidental clatter distracts Father Ybarra, Scully hurries away from him. She enters her office and sits at her desk where she opens a folder and starts to cry but, noticing a colleague looking across at her, she composes herself, taking another file and a packet of tissues from her desk drawers as her colleague leaves and she is left alone, staring sorrowfully down at the files in front of her. In MacLaren Natatorium, the man who chased and caught Agent Bannan stalks a swimmer, Cheryl Cunningham, watching her from the hidden depths of the water. The woman later exits the building and, as she walks to her car, the engine of a nearby snowplow roars, making her jump, but the vehicle soon drives away. While later driving along an icy side road, she encounters the snowplow again and tries to overtake it but the vehicle, driven by her stalker from the pool, pushes her car off the road, causing her to crash, relatively unharmed, into a hay bale in a snow-covered field. peers through the window of Cheryl Cunningham's car at her, moments before he abducts her.]] The man stops and reverses his snowplow on the road, then walks over to her car where, even though she is at first under the false impression that he has come to her rescue, he breaks her window, while she is struggling to unbuckle her seatbelt, before he causes her to lose consciousness and continues to abduct her. Part Two In their home, Mulder and Scully are lying together in bed but Scully is having difficulty sleeping so she talks to Mulder about the issue troubling her, telling him about Christian and the boy's predicament for the first time. She questions God, regarding the boy, and wonders whether a strong connection she feels to Christian is due to the loss of their son, William, but Mulder dismisses this possibility. After he persuades her to go to sleep, the couple kiss but Scully humorously complains he has a scratchy beard and, before she begins to completely relax, she remembers to tell him that she discovered that, weirdly, traces of an animal tranquilizer had been found in the tissue of the severed arm, news that now keeps Mulder awake. Within moments, he is on his feet and moves to the bathroom, followed there by Scully. He prepares to shave himself while pondering the evidence, recalling that Father Joe mentioned he heard the noise of dogs barking and cried tears of blood. Even though it is late night, Scully answers a call from ASAC Whitney, who is a passenger in a car with Agent Drummy, driving, as well as Father Joe, and tells Scully that the FBI group are following a new lead provided to them by the former priest. THREE HOURS LATER After Scully and a cleanshaven Mulder drive to the same snowy, rural area where the FBI previously found the severed arm and are searching again, Whitney approaches the pair and explains that Father Joe led the search effort back to this location. Doubting Father Joe's repetitive descriptions of his own supposed visions, Drummy convinces ASAC Whitney to allow him permission to dismiss the tired searchers. Mulder turns to Father Joe, who claims he now sees the face of an anonymous person whose eyes stare out of a surface like through dirty glass. When Father Joe starts to pensively walk away, heading for a nearby tree line, Mulder asks Scully what the description means, but she ignores the question, instead insisting that Mulder still, after years, is looking for his sister and that he stops doing so, advising him to finally accept that his sister is beyond saving. In an attempt to ignore her, Mulder calls the departing FBI team back and they trudge after Father Joe, following him towards the tree line and then to a clearing in the forest, where Mulder and Father Joe begin to dig. While the manual excavation continues, resulting in the discovery of a block of solid ice that is buried in the snow and contains at least one body of a deceased woman staring out of the dirty glass of the ice, the team are unaware that one of the abductors, the snowplow driver, is in the vicinity as he maneuvers his truck along a forest track, stops the vehicle - knocking over a sign that reads "no hunting" - and takes a bag that drips blood from the back of the truck before he walks, hauling the bag, to the edge of a cliff, overlooking the team. He seems concerned, as he gazes down at the search effort, but moves away again. As the FBI team disperses below the cliff and agents hurry to find equipment that will enable them to exhume the block of ice, Scully watches in concern as Mulder walks out of the clearing but she whirls in alarm to face Father Joe, who is standing behind her and tells her not to give up. The snowplow driver steers his truck to a metal gate surrounding a complex where dogs are kept in cages and Cheryl Cunningham has been secured in a wooden kennel with only a small slit. Peering through this, she screams with desperate appeals for release and, when two Russian men dressed in surgical garb crouch down next to her cage, she urges them to help her but they soon move out of sight. Her kennel is transported through the complex, while she demands to know where she is and sees the snowplow driver talking to two other people dressed in white surgical attire. Her cage halts near the man who was attacked by Agent Bannan, who is now lying on an operating table, under a green surgical shroud, still bearing the facial wounds from his assault, as tears of blood fill his eyes and trickle down the sides of his face. 8:08 A.M. In the conference room at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Father Ybarra finishes informing the staff and doctors on the hospital's decision to relocate Christian to a hospice, as Scully enters. She disputes this arrangement but eventually relents and quietly takes a seat as Father Ybarra begins to turn his attention to the discussion of other matters although, moments later, Scully speaks up to present the controversial option of treating Christian's condition with a form of stem cell therapy, which she insists is not the choice of hospital administration to make but her own. As she withdraws from the room, Father Ybarra recommends that she consult "the highest authority" on the matter, claiming he already has done so. QUANTICO, VIRGINIA 10:20 A.M. As Mulder tries to call Scully from an FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, he looks at a photograph of Agent Bannan where he notices that she is wearing a medical I.D. bracelet and Scully researches stem cell therapy at the hospital, using Google as a resource. Mulder records a message on her answering machine, informing her, while scientists constantly work on the ice block behind him, that eleven cleanly amputated human limbs, taken from victims, and more traces of the animal tranquilizer have been found in the ice. After Whitney arrives just as he ends the call, Mulder excitedly claims he has a hunch that they are close to solving a dozen murders but Whitney indicates that her priority is finding Agent Bannan. Later, in a conference room within the same facility, Father Joe attests to having a vision of Cheryl Cunningham and, inspired by his account, Mulder asks Whitney to make preparations for them to investigate the recent kidnapping. SOMERSET, WEST VIRGINIA 2:08 P.M. Mulder, Whitney, Drummy and Father Joe arrive at the crash site, where they learn more about Cheryl Cunningham's disappearance. Drummy suspects that she merely crashed her car, escaped the vehicle by knocking out its window and fell asleep on the snowy ground while taking a shortcut but Mulder disagrees, basing his opinion on the angle of the crash. Even though Father Joe is unable to psychically sense anything at the scene, Mulder comes across another medical I.D. bracelet, lying on the snow-covered ground, and, on his suggestion, the team force open the car's locked trunk to uncover another clue - a bathing suit that is frozen stiff but still smells of chlorine. This finding leads the team to McLaren Natatorium, where questioning an elderly male receptionist, who is slow on the uptake, proves unfruitful, at least initially. As Christian is being wheeled into an operating theater before his treatment of stem cell therapy begins, he talks with Scully, commenting that she now looks scared. Preparing with the rest of her team, Scully watches Christian from an adjacent room, looking through a window at him and, once he is unconscious, she is instrumental in his operation, inserting stem cells into his brain. Shortly after this procedure, Scully is writing medical notes in a shower room when Mulder arrives. Although she feels a need not to be disturbed from her work, they discuss Christian at length and Scully explains that the hospital's medical staff won't know whether his treatment is working until a series of the procedures are completed. When she realizes that Mulder has come to the hospital to talk about something else, he apprises her of the most recent disappearance, revealing several facts that he and the FBI investigators have learned, from which Scully immediately deduces that the two victims were targeted for their organs. She advises him on how to proceed with the case but, when he implores her to stay involved with it, she unselfishly refuses, explaining that they have both moved on in their lives and that she is not willing to allow "the darkness" into her home. Even though Mulder insists it is in his nature, Scully encourages him to write down his experiences in a book and, although he initially assumes that she is asking him to give up, she declines to do so but sadly declares that she will not be coming home. Mulder urges her to reconsider but she admits that she is at a loss for another course of action and the couple part, each wishing the other good luck. Scully later meanders down the hospital's main stairs and encounters Christian's parents at the bottom, who announce that they have decided to end their son's stem cell therapy and instead put their faith solely in God, notifying her that they have spoken with Father Ybarra but have come to their new decision without his influence. Clearly holding back tears, Scully considers aloud what might happen if the treatment was successful and admits that she does not want to give up. MANNERS-COLONIAL HOSPITAL 5:01 P.M. The snowplow driver obtains a liver from an operating theater at Manners-Colonial Hospital. Just before he has a chance to leave, he is detained by Robert Koell, from the District Attorney's office in Richmond, as well as by a police officer and is questioned by Koell. Unaccompanied, Scully revisits Father Joe - who is also currently alone, in his home in Richmond - and he invites her inside. She is curious as to why he instructed her not to give up but he claims that he has no idea and doesn't know much about her, apart from the fact that her beliefs differ from Mulder's, who Joe mistakes as her husband. He and Scully continue to argue and, on her way out, he quotes scripture to her, which further angers her and she returns to him, demanding to know why he told her not to give up. He again answers that he does not know, shouting his reply at her this time, and says that all he ever wanted was to serve God. A seizure then takes its hold on him and - soon after Scully bitterly directs him to discontinue his deceitful act, genuinely believing it is that - she sees that his convulsions are real. In the abductors' compound, one of the men who earlier knelt down by Cheryl Cunningham's box does so again, offering her food and unlocking her wooden kennel. He is distracted by the sudden and extreme shaking of Agent Bannan's body nearby, however, and rushes away. With her box now unsecured, Cheryl escapes from it and scrambles past the dog cages before clambering down a metal chute, all the way to the end. Dragging her lower body behind her, she bursts through a dirty plastic curtain into the wintry air outside, where a two-headed guard dog charges at her, barking first and then growling. Background Information BACKGROUND INFORMATION Cast *David Duchovny as Fox Mulder *Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully *Amanda Peet as ASAC Dakota Whitney *Billy Connolly as Father Joseph Crissman *Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner as Agent Mosley Drummy *Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner *Callum Keith Rennie as 2nd Abductor (Janke Dacyshyn) *Adam Godley as Father Ybarra *Alex Diakun as Gaunt Man *Nicki Aycox as 2nd Victim (Cheryl Cunningham) *Fagin Woodcock as 1st Abductor (Franz Tomczeszyn) *Marco Niccoli as Christian Fearon *Carrie Ruscheinsky as Margaret Fearon *Spencer Maybee as Blair Fearon *Veronika Hadrava as Female Assistant *Denis Krasnogolov as Male Assistant *Patrick Keating as Slight Man *Roger Horchow as Elderly Gent *Stephen E. Miller as Feed Store Proprietor *Xantha Radley as Monica Bannan *Lorena Gale as On Screen Doctor *Donavon Stinson as Suited Man *Dion Johnstone as 1st Cop *Sarah-Jane Redmond as Special Agent in Charge *Christina D'Alimonte as Doctor's Colleague *Vanesa Tomasino as Hallway Agent *Luvia Petersen as O.R. Nurse *Babz Chula as Surgeon *Marci T. House as Sheriff *J. P. Finn as Whispering Priest *Beth Siegler as Anesthesiologist *Stacee Copeland as Doctor *Tom Charron as Sheriff Horton Uncredited *Chris Carter as Man sitting in hospital hallway (uncredited) *Vanessa Morley as FBI Agent in hall (uncredited) *Michael Stevens as Board Room Doctor (uncredited) References ASAC; Luther Lee Boggs; Clyde Bruckman; George W. Bush; District Attorney; dog; Father; J. Edgar Hoover; Samantha Mulder; Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital; Quantico; Richmond; Gerald Schnauz; Somerset, West Virginia; Special Agent in Charge; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; William External Links *Official site * * Category:I Want to Believe